The state of RI guaranteed loans to Schilling’s (now bankrupt) firm ( 38 Studios), to the amount of $100 million. The firm folded without ever releasing its new multi-player, multi-role game called “Copernicus”. I read that the RI government considers the game to be unsalable-is this true?
presumably after spending $100 million , they would have produced something marketable-or is the game market pretty fickle?
First, keep in mind Copernicus wasn’t the only game they were working on - they put out other games, too, so it’s not just $100 million to one thing.
From my understanding it was an MMO that was going to be set in the Amalaur world, right? The IP they tried to establish had no real “dig” (people liked the game, but not the setting) and nothing to go for it, and the market is absolutely bloated with MMOs right now. MMOs require a ton of work, and frankly most just kind of suck. With so many MMOs, and so many free to play ones, they need to be special to get attention - and do to servers, expected updates, help staff, GMs, etc, they’re not something you can just release and be done with. You need to have staff on hand to handle post-release and keep working on it.
Also, nobody wants an unfinished game. After a studio dissolves, unfinished stuff just can’t really be recovered well. Jumping into somebody else’s code without that person there is a mess, and when you lose the programmers, designers, developers, artists, voice actors, etc, you can’t just tack on an ending. It’s like if a movie was being made and the director and all the actors died in a planecrash halfway through. The stuff done so far on that movie is wasted.
Rhode Islanders, I’ve heard, are not a risk taking bunch and it’s pretty evident here. In this specific case, Rhode Island did everything in their power to make certain their investment would become worthless. So their revenge was evidently served cold… to themselves.
In all seriousness, they really didn’t seem to understand anything about the business they made loans to, and their later actions wrecked any possibility of recouping anything whatsoever from it.
Why the hell was the state investing in game development anyway?
Portfolio diversification?
Yes, that’s a WAG.
It’s a job that pays a living wage with minimal environmental impact, which attracts skilled workers. If you can get your own little “Silicon Alley” started, then your state can attract businesses, employees and students from around the world. In theory, then, this investment gets paid back in various forms of tax revenue many times over.
Virtually every state and many cities are doing something like this, whether using direct funding or just tax breaks. Sometimes they’re wooing existing businesses (like attracting Boeing to Georgia) and sometimes they’re focused on startups.
This.
I’m not a super smart business guy but even from a laymans perspective they seemed to slow roll so many aspects of the bankruptcy that by the time they were able to try to sell Amalur people had moved on to other, more refined IPs and the property had little to no name recognition left.
Shame too because they were on to something with KOA and it almost, but not quite, caught fire. Another game by the same team incorporating lessons learned could have turned things around for the company dramatically.
There are a few big “BUTS” that should be mentioned anytime Schilling/“Copernicus” comes up.
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38 Studios is actually two different teams. The main 38 team worked on “Copernicus” will Big Huge Games created Kingdoms of Amalur. Amalur was released in early 2013 to decent acclaim and decent sales. But “Copernicus” wasn’t even close to being done and it was an MMO, which is more complex than a single-player game and much more expensive.
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38 Studios basically lied to RI about the costs associated with a big-time MMO. Their estimates weren’t based in reality, and the time to develop the game and the cost to develop it were way underestimated.
Essentially, 38 Studios’ game development adventures are similar to someone jumping into the movie business and then being shocked that they couldn’t fund something like Titanic to completion.
latest t the state is mulling defaulting on the bonds-it seems they are not legally obligated to make good on them.
That will make RI even less desirable a place to invest. More to the point, is the online game market a business that needs public support?
What are you babbling about? Governments invest in local business all the time. Regardless of the fact that 38 Studios makes video games, it’s still just a business.
It wasn’t so much that the State of RI considers it unsalable, the game went up for public auction a few weeks ago and didn’t get any acceptable offers. The Governor did slam the deal/game/Schilling again the other day, but that was after it didn’t sell.